Desktop
Mobile
ENGINEERING MANAGER · GALVESTON, TX
Nathan
Simmons
builds software
worth caring about.
Eight years as a software engineer, more than half as a technical lead and manager. Still writing code. Still obsessing over UX. Building the AI-forward engineering practices that make teams genuinely faster.
EXPERIENCE8yr
PROJECTS4+
CURRENTLY ATFinastra
Engineering Manager
Engineering Manager
BASED INGalveston · TX
Open to new opportunities
BACKGROUND
A bit about me.
I didn't find software engineering the way most engineers do. I came to it sideways, and then one afternoon I completed a basic HTML tutorial that made a popup window appear in a browser. It was barely anything, but it was mine, and the feeling was immediate:this is it.
It makes sense in retrospect. I've always been someone who builds things with his hands, gets obsessive about design even as a layperson, and has a lifelong other life as a musician and songwriter. Software is the only field I've found that runs both channels at once, the analytical and the creative. Most careers make you pick a lane. This one doesn't.
Eight years in now, more than half as a technical lead and manager, and the hands-on side never went away. I still write code. I still obsess over UX. Over the last couple of years I went from skeptic to full convert on agentic AI tools, then went further and built a practice around them with my team, figured out what they look like at enterprise scale, and made the whole engineering organization better at using them.
Same impulse as that browser popup. Still chasing it.
LANGUAGES & RUNTIMES
FRAMEWORKS & TOOLS
RIGHT NOW
- BUILDING
- Enterprise banking platform at Finastra
- STUDYING
- B.Sc. CS at Central Methodist University
- EXPLORING
- Agentic AI at enterprise scale
- LOCATION
- Galveston, TX
CAREER
- 2022–nowEngineering Manager · Finastra
- 2019–22Senior Software Engineer · Finastra
- 2018–19Associate Software Engineer · Finastra
WORK
Things I have built.
Desktop
Mobile
Desktop
Mobile
Desktop
Mobile
My Houston City
PersonalA native Android city guide for Houston covering parks, restaurants, coffee shops, and local favorites.
WRITING
What I have been thinking about.
If your team's AI coding sessions feel like re-teaching the model from scratch every time, this is for you. We built a constitution → auto-scoped instructions → specialized agents → external skills → /remember stack and hardened it before rolling it out.
2,334 shows, 441 songs, 593 venues — all playable in-browser alongside the setlist. If you want Dead stats, you go to one site. If you want to actually listen, you go somewhere else. Nobody had put those two things in the same place, so I built it.
It's blind debugging — the ability to mentally step through complex state changes without reaching for a chat window. The research is more specific than most people realize, and frontier teams are actively fighting back.
The pushback on "don't let your skills atrophy" didn't come from me — it came from my engineers. They wanted that language explicit and fleshed out. What I actually walked away with was something I didn't expect: my team is thoughtful.
I've been telling you to embrace AI agents. Turns out I left out the part where they can become insider threats. My first LinkedIn article — on the security risks I kept quiet about while championing adoption.
Not because I got faster at writing code. Because the tools got precise. She was in tears over spelling practice with other apps. They were all about catching mistakes. Mine separates practice from judgment. Agent-assisted coding isn't replacing software engineers — it's giving us back the joy of building things we actually own.
READING LIST
Feeds worth following.
Interesting and insightful people and publications I follow.
Engineering
Industry
LET'S TALK
Drop me a line.
Whether you want to collaborate, have a project to discuss, or just want to say hello — I read everything and try to respond within a couple of days.
nathansimmons@hey.com